America is right to attack Starmer’s record on human rights

The Telegraph ^ | 13 August 2025 | Poppy Coburn

[MinorityRepublican]

Aren’t human rights wonderful? I’m sure many of our readers will recall the dark days before the passing of the Human Rights Act: child-snatchers prowling the evening streets to deny parents the right to a family life, gruesome thugs free to torture any citizen who might try and engage in a free election. 1997 really was awful.

It’s easy to mock our unfortunate new state religion, but even the most hardened human-rights sceptic will be heartened to read the US State Department’s annual report into human rights in Britain.

America takes a different view on domestic affairs than the likes of Lord Hermer, warning that in 2024 “The human rights situation worsened in the United Kingdom” and that there are now “significant… issues”.

The issues in question relate to our handling of free speech, particularly the “enforcement of or threat of criminal or civil laws in order to limit expression” in the aftermath of the Southport riots.

The State Department seems aggrieved that the British Government called on US tech firms to “censor speech deemed misinformation or ‘hate speech’”, echoing the dismay of figures within the administration over the treatment of Lucy Connolly, who was jailed for 31 months after posting (and then deleting) a message judged to be racial incitement.

It’s hard to dispute the measured criticism of our free expression issues, nor the suggestion of backsliding after the creation of censorship powers under the Online Safety Act.

What makes this report so remarkable is how similar it is in form – to those expected of authoritarian rogue states like Belarus. After each example of free-speech violations, we are reminded of the condemnation of “media freedom NGOs”, as if our Government can no longer be trusted by our closest ally to maintain an independently liberal state.

[A strike]

Keir Stasi’s island police state..